issue: Foreign Policy & Defense

Ainsley in Politico Magazine: What Keir Starmer’s Advisers Told Democrats in Washington

Posted on by Max Sherrill

When the British political strategist Deborah Mattinson heard Vice President Kamala Harris boast in the presidential debate about prosecuting transnational gangs, she thought the message was spot on — and that Harris needed to deliver it many, many, many more times.

The former head of strategy for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who won a landslide election in July, Mattinson was in Washington the week of the debate to meet with Democrats, including advisers to the Harris campaign, and share lessons from the Labor Party’s smashing summer victory. She and Claire Ainsley, Starmer’s former head of policy, urged Democrats to focus intently on winning back working-class voters who had drifted to the right in recent years — toward right-wing populists who seemed more in touch with their economic frustrations and cultural grievances.

“For voters, cost of living and immigration are the two biggest issues,” Ainsley said. “And that’s where they need to focus their attention.”

POLITICO spoke with Mattinson and Ainsley as they were wrapping up their visit to Washington. Harris, they said, was on the right track. But with only weeks left until the election, there was still plenty of work for her to do to defeat former President Donald Trump.

Their advice was not just based on intuition or interpretation of the recent U.K. election. Ainsley is a leader of the Progressive Policy Institute, where she directs a transnational effort to revitalize center-left parties. As part of that effort, the think tank shuttled Labour politicians to Washington earlier this year and the Democratic convention in August, and conducted polling and focus groups in American swing states over the summer.

Read more of their interview in Politico Magazine.

Jacoby for WM: With a Ukrainian Army Chaplain

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

Andrii Ryzhov, an assistant chaplain in the Ukrainian army, peers into the back of his battered Volkswagen van on a leafy side street in Kramatorsk, just 15 miles from the front line. These are the tools of his trade: dog-eared cardboard boxes containing packaged food, canned goods, and pocket prayer books, nestled among rolls of camouflage netting and combat gear, including bullet-proof vests.

Ryzhov had telephoned one of his commanders that morning and discovered that the officer was in the hospital—so now he is visiting, unbidden. The chaplain packs a box to take into the clinic across the street: two packages of cookies, a handful of hard candy, dried fruit, and nuts, as well as a copy of the New Testament. “We do whatever we can to support the men, believers, and nonbelievers,” Ryzhov’s fellow chaplain, Serhii Tsoma, explains to me. “And it’s often very simple—cook food, fix cars, tell jokes, whatever makes them feel better.”

I first met Ryzhov in early 2022, not long after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. His hometown, Irpin, a bedroom community outside of Kyiv, had fought off the first wave of Russian invaders, a show of resistance that stunned Moscow at a time when the Ukrainian capital was expected to fall in days. Most able-bodied residents left Irpin during the monthlong battle. But Ryzhov remained, driving into the shelling day after day to evacuate the elderly and provide humanitarian assistance for those who refused to go.

Keep reading in Washington Monthly.

Ainsley in The New York Times: Britain’s Anti-Immigrant Riots Pose Critical Test for Starmer

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Those close to Mr. Starmer say he is getting a grip on the disorder, drawing on his experience as a chief prosecutor in 2011, when riots took place in London and he pushed to get those responsible tried, sentenced and jailed swiftly to deter others.

“He has a detailed knowledge of how to do this, and he understands how you prosecute and convict quickly, and you do so visibly in a way that sends a message to anybody who is thinking about participating in one of these riots,” said Claire Ainsley, a former policy director for Mr. Starmer.

But ensuring that such violence does not recur is harder, she said.

“We have had the far right with us in good economic times and in bad economic times,” said Ms. Ainsley, who now works in Britain for the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington-based research institute.

“But it is much harder for them to have any kind of influence when you are in better economic times,” she added. “That means people’s living standards rising and people starting to feel they are better off and that they are part of a system that is working — and that isn’t a description of Britain today.”

Ms. Ainsley pointed to the role of social media in spreading misinformation and stoking tensions, and cautioned against making a direct link between the riots and immigration. She noted that, alongside extremists, some of the rioters may be looters and other opportunists.

It is, she added, “wrong to assume that all of the people participating in these riots are politically motivated by immigration.”

Read more in The New York Times.

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Ukrainian Public Opinion Remains Determined Against Russian Aggression

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

I’ve suspected for months that something was changing in Ukraine. Virtually everyone I had asked since the beginning of the war had maintained that Kyiv could win, with the only acceptable outcome being Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and the Donbas region controlled by Moscow since 2015. But last winter, you could sense a growing uncertainty, and a few of my friends began to whisper about alternative scenarios.

Two recent polls shed a bright light on these unusually unspoken concerns. One sounding, conducted in May by the Rating Group, found 27 percent of respondents uncertain that Ukraine would succeed in liberating all its lost territory, while 26 percent were willing to negotiate a compromise. Also in May, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found 32 percent—more than triple the number who agreed a year before—willing to give up “some” territory to “achieve peace and preserve [Ukrainian] independence.”

This doesn’t mean Ukrainians are ready to surrender. KIIS project manager Anton Grushetsky cautions against exaggerating his team’s findings. Given the situation on the ground, he argues, Ukrainians remain remarkably resilient. The fighting on the frontline is all but stalemated; Russian missiles bombard Kyiv and other cities every day. More than three-quarters of the country has lost a close friend or relative, and no one is confident of continued Western support. Still, only 32 percent are considering compromise, while more than half—55 percent—are standing firm, insisting that “no circumstances” could justify conceding territory.

Keep reading in Washington Monthly.

Paying for Progress: A Blueprint to Cut Costs, Boost Growth, and Expand American Opportunity

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The next administration must confront the consequences that the American people are finally facing from more than two decades of fiscal mismanagement in Washington. Annual deficits in excess of $2 trillion during a time when the unemployment rate hovers near a historically low 4% have put upward pressure on prices and strained family budgets. Annual interest payments on the national debt, now the highest they’ve ever been in history, are crowding out public investments into our collective future, which have fallen near historic lows. Working families face a future with lower incomes and diminished opportunities if we continue on our current path.

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) believes that the best way to promote opportunity for all Americans and tackle the nation’s many problems is to reorient our public budgets away from subsidizing short-term consumption and towards investments that lay the foundation for long-term economic abundance. Rather than eviscerating government in the name of fiscal probity, as many on the right seek to do, our “Paying for Progress” Blueprint offers a visionary framework for a fairer and more prosperous society.

Our blueprint would raise enough revenue to fund our government through a tax code that is simpler, more progressive, and more pro-growth than current policy. We offer innovative ideas to modernize our nation’s health-care and retirement programs so they better reflect the needs of our aging population. We would invest in the engines of American innovation and expand access to affordable housing, education, and child care to cut the cost of living for working families. And we propose changes to rationalize federal programs and institutions so that our government spends smarter rather than merely spending more.

Many of these transformative policies are politically popular — the kind of bold, aspirational ideas a presidential candidate could build a campaign around — while others are more controversial because they would require some sacrifice from politically influential constituencies. But the reality is that both kinds of policies must be on the table, because public programs can only work if the vast majority of Americans that benefit from them are willing to contribute to them. Unlike many on the left, we recognize that progressive policies must be fiscally sound and grounded in economic pragmatism to make government work for working Americans now and in the future.

If fully enacted during the first year of the next president’s administration, the recommendations in this report would put the federal budget on a path to balance within 20 years. But we do not see actually balancing the budget as a necessary end. Rather, PPI seeks to put the budget on a healthy trajectory so that future policymakers have the fiscal freedom to address emergencies and other unforeseen needs. Moreover, because PPI’s blueprint meets such an ambitious fiscal target, we ensure that adopting even half of our recommended savings would be enough to stabilize the debt as a percent of GDP. Thus, our proposals to cut costs, boost growth, and expand American opportunity will remain a strong menu of options for policymakers to draw upon for years to come, even if they are unlikely to be enacted in their entirety any time soon.

The roughly six dozen federal policy recommendations in this report are organized into 12 overarching priorities:

I. Replace Taxes on Work with Taxes on Consumption and Unearned Income
II. Make the Individual Income Tax Code Simpler and More Progressive
III. Reform the Business Tax Code to Promote Growth and International Competitiveness
IV. Secure America’s Global Leadership
V. Strengthen Social Security’s Intergenerational Compact
VI. Modernize Medicare
VII. Cut Health-Care Costs and Improve Outcomes
VIII. Support Working Families and Economic Opportunity
IX. Make Housing Affordable for All
X. Rationalize Safety-Net Programs
XI. Improve Public Administration
XII. Manage Public Debt Responsibly

Read the full Blueprint. 

Read the Summary of Recommendations.

Read the PPI press release.

See how PPI’s Blueprint compares to six alternatives. 

Media Mentions:

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: A Hello to Arms

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

I’m not sure what made me do it. Living in a war zone, you get used to the emotional ups and downs. But there’s growing uncertainty here in Ukraine, and finally, something prompted me to act.

I woke up one morning a few weeks ago with a new sense of dread and urgency. What if things really were going sideways? What if the Russians managed to break through in Chasiv Yar, a pivotal battle on the eastern front that could unleash a cascade of additional Russian wins further to the west? And what, if anything, could I do to make a difference? What was the point of writing another op-ed piece?

So I started calling around. Did friends have any ideas? A few hours later, I decided to buy a drone for a unit fighting in Chasiv Yar.

Keep reading in Washington Monthly.

Jacoby in NBC News: The shadow of Trump looms over the NATO summit

Posted on by Alex Terr

As for Ukraine’s future security arrangements, U.S. and European officials say they hope to hammer out a statement at the summit promising an “irreversible” path to NATO membership for Kyiv.

But that language may not be enough to secure Ukraine’s place in the NATO alliance if Trump is elected, said Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the New Ukraine Project at the Progressive Policy Institute think tank.

“If you want to be in the West, you have to be tied to the West, and indeed, you have to be ultimately protected by the West. And so, in a way, NATO membership is the most important thing that Ukrainians are fighting for,” Jacoby said.

Jacoby for Foreign Policy: How Ukraine’s Drone Industry Took Flight

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

Vladyslav Ripko’s day job is working for the Ukrainian government as a financial analyst. But in the evenings and on weekends, he and his friends make drones for the army. He calls their group an “enthusiast collective.” All 12 members volunteer their time. They raise money for drone components on a crowdfunding platform. One volunteer with a 3D printer makes small parts they cannot buy. The team assembles the components in a Kyiv workshop and sends the finished product to the front using a commercial package service.

Unlike many larger Ukrainian drone producers, Ripko’s amateur collective receives no direct help from the government. Still, he said, he benefits from the government’s campaign to support private businesses building unmanned autonomous vehicles, or UAVs, for the armed forces.

Some half-dozen government agencies, including the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, have provided tax breaks, start-up grants, and technical support, rolling back the red tape and regulation that hem in much of the rest of the Ukrainian economy. The result is that more than 200 registered companies—some industry insiders count more than 500 producers if you include smaller firms and volunteers in garages—now supply troops with hundreds of thousands of drones a month.

Keep reading in Foreign Policy.

Jacoby for The Bulwark: The Trumpists’ Dangerous ‘Peace’ Plan for Ukraine

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

NO ONE IN THE UNITED STATES OR UKRAINE imagines that a re-elected President Donald Trump would be much of a friend to Kyiv. But the so-called “peace” proposal leaked last week by two former national security staffers from the Trump administration, now at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, is even more toxic than many expected.

Predictably enough, the plan stipulates an immediate ceasefire, obligatory negotiations with Russia and a temporary—in truth, likely to be permanent—abandonment of Ukrainian claims to the 20 percent of Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Moscow. The poison pill was less predictable: Under the plan, the United States would strong-arm Kyiv to defer membership in NATO “for an extended period”—again, in the real world, most likely forever.

Trump hasn’t yet endorsed the plan, but his comments on a podcast last month suggest he is open to a NATO ban. “If Ukraine goes into NATO, it’s a real problem for Russia,” the former president told a trio of sympathetic Silicon Valley investors. Echoing a claim that Moscow and its proxies have been peddling for years, Trump argued that it was President Joe Biden’s support for Ukrainian membership in the alliance that provoked Vladimir Putin to invade in February 2022.

Keep reading in The Bulwark.

Pankovits for RealClearWorld: What U.S. Democrats Can Learn From UK Labour

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tressa Pankovits

British voters go to the polls in less than a month. All signs point to a crushing defeat for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party after 14 chaotic years in power. The Labour Party, ably led by Keir Starmer, is leading the Tories in polls by more than 20 points and appears poised for a strong victory.

Like here at home, U.K. voters say the economy is their most important issue. Unlike here, however, K-12 education — known as “schools policy” in Britain — is expected to be a key flashpoint. Labour is leaning into the issue, knowing that it’s important to working-class families fed up with crumbling schools and a government that seems to care little about their children’s academic or mental well-being.

This is not the first time that Labour has had to rescue an education system in crisis. The last Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, rode into office in 1997 partly on the back of an oft-repeated three-word phrase: “Education, education, education.” Like his American counterpart, President Bill Clinton, Blair wasted little time pushing through education reforms.

Keep reading in RealClearWorld.

Jacoby for NY Post: As Europe Shifts Right, Biden Must Stand Up for Ukraine

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

Nearly 185 million voters in 27 European countries voted last weekend to elect representatives not to their own, national governments but to the European Parliament – the legislative arm of the European Union (EU).

The outcome was dramatic: a decided turn to the right, especially in the bloc’s two biggest member states, France and Germany.

The shift will have consequences for a range of European issues, most significantly the green transition, now likely to be much slower.

But it also has important repercussions for the US, underscoring the need for American global leadership on Ukraine and Russia.

Keep reading in the New York Post.

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Beacons of Hope for the Ukrainian Economy

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

As donors and investors gather this week in Berlin for the Ukraine Recovery Conference, all eyes are on helping the besieged nation. In Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, the Danish government assists by jump-starting local businesses, fighting corruption—and helping Ukraine shake off its Soviet economic legacy.

The damage is evident everywhere in Mykolaiv, once a bustling port and shipbuilding hub near the Black Sea, 85 miles east of Odesa. Russian and Ukrainian forces fought hand to hand in and around the city in March 2022, followed by eight months of relentless shelling by the frustrated invading army. In November, Ukrainian troops pushed the Russians out of range, and the invaders never made it to Odesa.

More than two years later, many of the windows in the working-class city are still covered with plywood. Parking lots are pocked with shell craters. There’s a gaping eight-story hole at the center of the empty regional administration building—a reminder of the missiles meant to assassinate popular Governor Vitalii Kim that killed 37 civil servants in late March 2022.

The city’s economic engine—the port—is idle. Russians still control the mouth of the channel that connects Mykolaiv to the Black Sea, and no cargo has come or gone since February 2022. The nearly 300-year-old town teems with displaced persons from southern Ukraine, but a quarter of the city’s prewar population of 480,000 has yet to return.

Keep reading in Washington Monthly.

Marshall for The Hill: New tactics and an assist from NATO can help Ukraine defeat Russia

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Will Marshall

U.S. allies will converge in Washington next month for this year’s NATO summit, which also marks the 75th anniversary of the most successful collective security pact in modern times.

Amid the prosaic business of managing a 32-nation alliance, one urgent question will hover over the gathering: Are the transatlantic partners doing enough to prevent Russia from snuffing out Ukraine’s sovereignty?

If they fail, it won’t just be a tragedy for Ukraine. Its defeat or dismemberment would reward Vladimir Putin’s aggression and whet his appetite for regaining control over other former Soviet possessions, such as Armenia, Moldova and the Baltic states.

Keep reading in The Hill.

GOP’s Budget-Busting Defense and Tax Proposals Are Incompatible

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Last week, Senator Roger Wicker, the GOP ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for increasing U.S. defense spending from roughly 3% to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) over the next five to seven years to prepare for increased geopolitical tensions with Russia, China, and Iran. That would require at least $5 trillion in new federal spending over the next decade, for which Senator Wicker offers no offsets.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans also want to spend an additional $4 trillion over the next decade to extend the Trump 2017 tax cuts, most of which are currently set to expire in 2026. Even if there were national security merits to Senator Wicker’s proposal, Republicans have offered the country no explanation for how they intend to finance $9 trillion in spending, which would reverse the $1.5 trillion of savings they secured in last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act several times over. By comparison, the most recent Biden budget proposed $4.1 trillion in new spending over the next decade, and much of that was offset by proposed tax increases.

Wicker’s plans for a dramatic ramp-up of defense spending were swiftly endorsed by Mitch McConnell and several other prominent Republicans. However, the proposal does not spell out a clear strategic rationale for such a high defense target. In an op-ed defending the proposal, Wicker cites the unfunded priorities lists annually requested by the Pentagon as one justification for this increase. However, the spending increase that would be required to fully fund all these priorities is less than one-tenth of what Wicker is calling for. Moreover, there is clearly some room for the Pentagon to pay for these priorities by spending smarter rather than spending more. The Inspector General’s Office, the Government Accountability Office, and the Defense Business Board have all suggested that smarter procurement and personnel decisions could save money with few negative consequences for military readiness.

But if our country faces threats dire enough to justify this new spending, you’d expect a party that has repeatedly threatened to crash the economy in the name of “fiscal discipline” to come up with ways to pay for it. Yet Republicans have instead chosen to do the opposite, calling for even more tax cuts for affluent Americans by making their 2017 tax bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), permanent. Although TCJA made some positive changes to simplify the individual tax code that are worth extending, it also lavished almost two-thirds of the overall benefits on the top fifth of income earners. And contrary to GOP claims that the law would pay for itself, even sympathetic estimates say only about 14% of the total cost is estimated to be recouped through faster economic growth.

America cannot afford the GOP’s reckless spending proposals. The federal government spent $2 trillion more than it raised in revenue last year — a deficit that cannot be justified at a time of strong economic growth and record-low unemployment rates. Interest costs as a percent of GDP are now higher than at any other point in American history, and they are projected to more than double over the next 30 years even if current law remains unchanged. If this growth continues unchecked, interest costs will begin to crowd out other important priorities, including national defense. This scenario is hardly hypothetical, as interest payments on the debt eclipsed defense spending for the first time last year. If the GOP truly wanted to ensure military readiness, they would ensure that defense spending is sustainable rather than pitch unrealistic spending surges.

Ultimately, these GOP proposals highlight how unserious their party is on improving the nation’s fiscal outlook. Despite their routine demonization of fiscal proposals from the other side of the aisle, they fail to recognize the complete incompatibility and hypocrisy of their own $9 trillion priorities. Republicans want to spend now and pay later — by sticking young Americans with the bill. Policymakers in Congress and the Administration should be having a serious dialogue about what is necessary to correct the nation’s fiscal trajectory, not making it worse.

Jacoby for Liberal Europe Podcast: The Future of Ukraine

Posted on by Max Sherrill

In this episode of the Liberal Europe Podcast, Ricardo Silvestre (Movimento Liberal Social) welcomes Tamar Jacoby, from the Progressive Policy Institute, former journalist and author, now living in Ukraine where she reports on the war and the work done by the government and civil society to modernize and make Ukraine a more liberal democratic country.

European Liberal Forum · Ep189 The future of Ukraine with Tamar Jacoby

Jacoby for the Los Angeles Times: Every day is Memorial Day in Ukraine

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

It looks like a video shot with a phone from an apartment window. The camera pans a line of cars stopped on the roadway below, and it takes a minute to understand what we’re looking at.

Then a cortege comes into view: about 50 people walking slowly behind a coffin draped with the Ukrainian flag. When the shot widens, we see that traffic traveling in the other direction on the eight-lane road has come to a halt, and people have gotten out of their cars. A few are standing solemnly as the funeral passes; most are kneeling on the asphalt, heads bowed in respect.

By the time I see the social media post, “The funeral of a fallen defender in Kyiv today,” nearly a thousand viewers have reacted with comments or emojis. Among the most common: Heroyam slava — glory to the heroes.

Memorial Day in the U.S. was set aside to honor those who fell in the Civil War. Now Americans play “Taps” and put flowers on graves of those who died in many wars, all in the past. Here in Ukraine, people can only dream of the day when the flag-draped funerals have ended and battles are distant memories commemorated by a nation at peace.

Keep reading in the Los Angeles Times.